I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about accelerating the sales process lately. Because I feel like too many sales are dying needless deaths because we’ve bought into a bunch of bogus statistics like:
- “Buyers are 69.32756918% to a buying decision before they “engage” with a salesperson.” (I made it up, but you don’t have to look far to find one.)
- “There are 14 different decision makers now.” (That’s wrong. There are probably 14 people that can say no, but only one that can say yes.)
Examples of this thing go on and on in too many of the places that sales “thought leadership” is offered up.
The reality is that sales has always been tough.
Every sales job I’ve ever had has been tough.
The truth is that it is still tough, but the real issue is that now more than ever we have to work harder than ever to overcome the challenges that are facing us.
There is so much noise in the form of media, podcasts, tweets, Facebook, spam, on and on.
This means that focus is more and more important than ever before.
It is because of all of this that I started thinking about the idea behind “High Impact Selling.”
At the core of “High Impact Selling” is the idea of selling with a marketer’s mind and selling like a strategist.
What do these two ideas mean and how can you apply them?
First, selling with a marketer’s mind…
This revolves around the concept that as modern salespeople we can’t necessarily get as far with brute force tactics any longer.
It takes a bit more creativity to get appointments, attention, and the commitments to move a sale forward.
Thinking like a marketer for me means that you need to have a bit of attention to the means of engagement and the message you are using.
By means of engagement, I mean that as an active salesperson you have a mix of tools that you can use to drive engagement and connection with your prospects.
We have phone calls. We have email. We have direct mail. We have events. Networking.
The list isn’t short.
The challenge for a lot of us is that we have to be willing to paint the canvas with different colors. Which simply means, asking yourself what other ways you can reach people and taking action on them.
Let’s say you make 100 calls a day.
How long does that really take?
I’ve been in boiler rooms making calls before, 100 calls..that’s 2 hours, tops.
After you’ve made your calls, what other things can you do to open up opportunities?
Can you start an email campaign?
Ask for referrals?
Network?
What ever.
That’s thinking like a marketer. Knowing that you have a world full of ways to connect and using them.
Second, selling like a strategist is a simple concept that I have been employing for a long time.
I have been using a 3 question framework to identify sales opportunities for a long time now.
- What is the value we create?
- Who actually can buy this?
- How do I reach them?
To sell like a strategist, you should always be keeping these questions and their answers in mind.
To add a layer of sophistication, make sure that you also think about which of these opportunities your strategic framework uncovers has the highest potential value.
Combined, you should open up a lot more potential opportunities. Because the thing about sales is that it was never easy. Its just that there were less distractions. Now that we are constantly distracted, our focus needs to be better.